July 2004

As part of the forthcoming UNPLANNED exhibition here in Los Angeles, opening March 25, Jeffrey Inaba and Darien Williams have produced "HLYWD," a series of images in which the individual letters of the Hollywood sign break off, rearrange themselves, and appear here and there around the city.

It is, the creators write, a "proposal for the migratory distribution of the Hollywood sign across Los Angeles"—like mobile anagrams in a game of trans-neighborhood Scrabble.

[Images: From "HLYWD" by Jeffrey Inaba and Darien Williams].

After all, "why limit [the Hollywood sign] to a fixed location?"

Proposal: Let it roam? The sign’s simple structure and generic materiality lend it well to temporary erection on any number of sites throughout the city. Neighborhoods ‘borrow’ the sign or any subgroup of its letters for a determined period of time. Migration affords the sign a temporal dimension, which ensures its continued vitality as an unplanned landmark.

With one letter lent out at a time, it'd bear an urban-scale resemblance to Shelley Jackson's Skin project, blown up and imposed on the roofs and hilltops of the city.

[Image: From "HLYWD" by Jeffrey Inaba and Darien Williams].

Or, like a new form of megastructural language poetry—perhaps an unexpected hybrid of Aram Saroyan and Ed Ruscha—the resulting project is a random species of unplanned words on the loose.

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BLDGBLOG ("building blog") is written by Geoff Manaugh. The opinions expressed here are my own; they do not reflect the views of my friends, editors, employers, publishers, or colleagues, with whom this blog is not affiliated.